Engineers who worked on the NASA rover Curiosity watched as it approached Mars. As each step of the descent worked, cheers and applause broke out from those who had worked on that part of the mission.

East Syracuse Minoa teachers Jason Fahy and Tim Patterson joined many of the engineers and their families Monday in Pasadena, Calif., to watch the landing.

“It was so exciting,” said Fahy, an eighth-grade physical sciences teacher at Pine Grove Middle School, who was joined by Pine Grove technology teacher Patterson. “Everyone was cheering and clapping, and then they were hugging and crying. It was phenomenal.”

Fahy, who had been working with NASA on videoconferencing for schools, entered a lottery to be one of 25 civilians at Mission Control, but he didn’t win. He later, however, got an email asking if he’d like to come to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the landing.

The two teachers — who this year plan to implement a project on the rover at their school — spent two days touring the facility, learning all about the rover and the upcoming landing. They and the engineers watched the landing from Pasadena City College, one of the official viewing sites.

They had a live feed into Mission Control so they could hear what the engineers controlling the rover were doing. They also listened to a NASA commentator who took them through the entire five-hour process step by step.

View full sizeJason Fahy (left) and Tim Patterson, teachers at Pine Grove Middle School, stand with a test model of the Mars rover at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif.

About 90 minutes before the landing, the commentator began detailing the maneuvers that guided the rover. The landing took seven minutes, which the engineers called “the seven minutes of terror” because they no longer had control over the rover.

“It was very dramatic,” said Fahy during an interview from a Chicago airport as the two teachers made their way back home.

There was a 14-minute delay in signals coming from Mars so the people watching in Pasadena didn’t know right away whether the landing had worked.

“It was exciting because you were never really sure what would happen,” Patterson said. “The engineers were all on the edge of their seats, and we were, too.”

When the rover sent pictures within a few minutes of the landing, Fahy said it was even more meaningful because the engineers had been worried it might take a day for the images to be sent back.

“This was monumental to me,” Fahy said. “I was thrilled to be there for this moment and be able to bring this experience back to my students, along with the engineering principles behind it.”